Jonathan B. Spira's Blog: Overload Stories, page 22

Dow Jones Webinar: Effectively Fight Information Overload

 

 

 

Dow Jones Webinar: Effectively Fight Information Overload

July 12, 2011

 

Jonathan Spira, chief analyst, Basex, will be interviewed by Anne Caputo, Executive Director Information Professional Programs, Dow Jones, about Information Overload and Information Professionals on Tuesday.

Register for the online event at no charge here.

Guest column: Is Infoveganism the Next Fad Diet?

Recently in this space, I discussed the ideas of Rolf Dobelli, a Swiss novelist whose white paper "Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet" struck a real chord with us at Basex. We found his ideas refreshing, logical, and compelling, and have made some efforts to apply his thinking to our work.

Dobelli's thesis, simply put, is that information obtained via the news is extremely damaging to us on multiple levels, ranging from our ability to form complex thoughts to our physical health.  He argues that the news systematically misleads us and introduces numerous cognitive errors to our thinking, and advocates complete disengagement from all news sources.  Obviously, this fits nicely with many of the things we at Basex have been saying about the problem of Information Overload and its negative impact on knowledge worker productivity and effectiveness.

His perspective, although extreme, is not in isolation.  A new term has popped up that bears some examining, Infovegan.  Coined by Clay Johnson, a technology thinker and open source information advocate, the term describes anyone who "makes a deliberate decision to remove a vast amount of news and information sources from one's diet, sticking to a well constrained allowable set of consumption inputs for their own health's sake."

Johnson centers his analysis of Information Overload on the perspective that the problem is not the amount of information, but the overconsumption of that information.  He points out that most people do not make conscious choices about what information to consume or not to consume, but when they do, they are subtracting information sources from their information diet in much the same way vegans cut animal products from their food diet.

The term Infovegan is not perfect in its application, and there are some actual vegans who object to the appropriation.  Nonetheless, framing Information Overload as a consumption and health issue by using familiar terminology (the term vegan) may be helpful for many people, and serve as a useful analytical framework to examine the harm that Information Overload is doing, as well as ways to deal with the problem.

When we are asked, as we often are, to give people tips and rules for reducing Information Overload, we stress that individual actions make a huge impact.  Vegans (the food kind) would no doubt agree and site numerous health and ethical benefits of choosing their diet and lifestyle.

Now, to be clear, we are not endorsing any particular diet when it comes to food (I'm a rib-loving BBQ enthusiast myself); however, when it comes to information, the Infovegan approach makes far too much sense to dismiss.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

E-mail Overload Tips and Techniques

E-mail overload is a major component of Information Overload.  Ironically, the biggest problems we have with e-mail stem from our own behavior. 

Here are three tips (from Overload! How Too Much Information Can Be Hazardous To Your Organization) which should help restore equilibrium :

1.) Read what you write – before you click send. Unclear communications result in excessive and unnecessary back-and-forth communications that would have been unnecessary were the first missive unambiguous and to-the-point.

2.) Read what others write – before replying. While it would be nice to believe that people will place the most important information at the very beginning, often times the key facts are buried in the closing paragraphs. What you are about to ask may already have been covered.

3.) Don't send mixed messages. E-mail messages should stick to one topic. Writing about the mid-year accounting review and adding in a question about a dinner meeting at the end is not only inappropriate, but it is likely the question will be overlooked.

When Technology Overtakes Biology: Information Overload Subject of Author Panel Discussion

Information Overload Subject of Author Panel Discussion

When Technology Overtakes Biology

Whether the subject is information overload, loss of attention, distraction, or workplace productivity, there is a wide area of common ground among recent books on these topics.

What if five authors of such books discussed among themselves the most relevant issues and solutions related to these topics? I listened in to their discussion yesterday and heard so much insight I could barely keep up with taking notes. I'll share their key findings with you here.

The panel was presented by the Information Overload Research Group (IORG).

IORG is a gathering of industry practitioners, academic researchers, consultants and other professionals who are dedicated to addressing the problem of information overload, an ongoing crisis that diminishes productivity and quality of life among knowledge workers worldwide

 

The full post can be read here

Bill Boyd: Information overload: Are we closer to independence?

Information overload: Are we closer to independence?

Bill Boyd

It's been the biggest week that I can recall for commentary about information overload.

The week kicked off with the Information Overload Research Group's "virtual literary salon" with five authors whose books address various facets of the topic: Dave Crenshaw (The Myth of Multitasking), Daniel Forrester (Consider), Maggie Jackson (Distracted), William Powers (Hamlet's BlackBerry), and Jonathan Spira (Overload!). You can listen to the 90-minute panel and read excellent summaries at Overload Stories and Workplace Frontiers.

Full post can be found here.

Guest column: Information Overload – Five Authors' Points-of-View

What channel is it on?

On Monday, the Information Overload Research Group (IORG) hosted a virtual literary salon on the topic of Information Overload entitled "Five Authors, Five Books, A Dialogue on Information Overload."  The event featured authors who have written recent books related to the subject of Information Overload.  They were asked to discuss why they wrote their books, and what issues they feel are most relevant today.

Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking, spoke about the problem of switch tasking, which describes what happens when people switch back and forth rapidly between tasks, lowering their productivity.  Crenshaw suggested several strategies for dealing with Information Overload, including setting definite start and end times for work in order to increase the productivity of work-designated times, learning to say no to new projects, and avoiding the "Double Q" (just one quick question). The Double Q is particularly vexing as those kinds of questions cause multiple small interruptions.  The best way to deal with the problem is to group all the little question into a single one-to-one meeting, avoiding the steady stream of small interruptions.

Daniel Forrester, author of Consider, mentioned that he was motivated to write his book in part by reading about how Bill Gates would schedule "Think Weeks" for thought and reflection twice a year.  At the time, he was also questioning how multitasking was affecting his own life and reading research that proved that multitasking was largely impossible.  Forrester went on to outline how he began looking at information-related military issues in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the leadership style of different leaders such as David Petraeus and Colin Powell.  He noted that we are still not spending enough time thinking and reflecting, saying that he believes the most successful companies and individuals will be those who engage in what he called "group reflection" as opposed to group think.

Next, Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted, outlined her argument that we risk heading into a Dark Age due to our lack of deep thinking, excessive work/life balance degradation, and a drop in listening skills.  She outlined the three types of attention, namely focus, awareness, and executive attention, and how people can be trained either to be distracted or to be focused.  She finished with a call to action to question our assumptions and values about how we think about attention, with a shift back to emphasizing focused thought and setting up our environments to support deep thought and reflection.

William Powers, author of Hamlet's BlackBerry, spoke about his realization of how the medium through which we consume information, namely screens, shapes our lives.  Prior to writing his book, he had begun to notice that it became difficult to get through more than a few pages in a good novel before feeling the urge to look at a screen.  Powers discussed how he went back to historical moments when humans faced technological challenges, and found practical examples of people dealing with information consumption and striking healthy balances in their lives.  He concluded that we all have to realize the benefits of finding a healthy balance and setting limits on information consumption.

To finish the discussion, Jonathan Spira, author of Overload!, discussed the evolution of his research into Information Overload over the last 20 years.  His starting point emerged from his observations of the problems that occur when knowledge workers share information and collaborate, almost all of them Information Overload-related.  This led him on a 20-year journey to address these issues and help people deal with the problem.  He outlined the phenomenon of recovery time, which is the time it takes a knowledge worker to return to the task at hand after an interruption (five to ten times the length of the interruption itself).  Jonathan also shared some statistics on how widespread the problem is: for example, 94% of knowledge workers have felt overwhelmedto the point of incapacitation by the amount of information they encounter on a daily basis.  His parting thought was that we can all do something about Information Overload by taking personal responsibility for the problem and taking action in whatever ways we can, such as by sending clearer e-mail, or by valuing our colleagues' time as if it were our own.

Jonathan, who was also serving as moderator, ended the event three minutes early and told attendees that he was hereby returning three additional minutes to them for the purpose of thought and reflection.

The entire event, including a question and answer session, can be heard in its entirety here (link coming soon)

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

Expert Access: What You Can Do About Information Overload

Today, both in the media and in offices around the world, there's much being said about the problem of Information Overload. Unfortunately, there's far more being said than actually done.  This is one of the reasons I wrote my new book "Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization."

Information Overload, a term that was first used in the early 1960s, describes an excess of information that results in the loss of ability to make decisions, process information expeditiously, and prioritize tasks effectively.

The problem of Information Overload can cause people to lose their ability to manage thoughts and ideas, contemplate, and even reason and think clearly.  For many, it results in work days that never seem to end, thereby completely destroying whatever remains of a supposed work/life balance.

High Definition Attention

Imagine yourself with a group of friends or family, gathered in a circle around a campfire. Maybe you have a canvas back chair, or maybe you're sitting on a log or even the ground. As twilight progresses, the sky darkens; you're surrounded by darkness and the thoughts that normally occupy your mind slip away into that darkness. We find ourselves captivated by a fire; the glowing embers, the dancing flames, and the wisps of smoke rising into the night.

Imagine now that someone's phone is vibrating, signaling an incoming text message. Now the brightness of a screen intrudes on the darkness. Someone else looks at their phone to see if they too have a message. Another person turns on a tablet device and begins to watch a movie, now the fire is no longer the collective center of attention. More and more the brightness of a screen has replaced the brightness from a fire. Can simply spending time in front of a fire improve your focus and attention?

Now go back in history to the time of the Romans and an encampment with people gathered around a fire. Only this time, their thoughts are held steady by the flame and embers. Or, imagine Romans indoors by a hearth in the evening staring into the fire.

Ever since Roman times, when we stare into a fire it has captivated us as humans. Our thoughts take on a special quality of sustained absorption and deep attention to something inside us. Maintaining that deep attention often produces profound insights.

The Romans invented a word to use when speaking of a fireplace or a hearth. That word was focus.

Today we rarely focus on a fireplace and the speed of a microwave has replaced the hearth. What we stare at instead are high definition screens that bring us information, connectivity, or entertainment. While we now are now able to watch in high definition, we no longer possess the attentional capacity of those who lived by the light of a simple fire.

We've progressed to watching anything we desire in high definition. But we are less able to focus on any one thing that is available to us because our attention is constantly shifting out of focus. Some of us have a feeling for what needs to be cultivated, I call it High Definition Attention.

The next time you experience a campfire that holds your attention into the night, make a note of what you notice inside yourself, what insight or solution comes to you while your mind is still?

Spread the results of High Definition Attention to others. Live each day like a Roman: focus.

Guest column: Information Literacy On Campus

Finding information is a critical component of knowledge work, and occupies a significant amount of a knowledge worker's time.  We know from research conducted by Basex in 2010 that knowledge workers spend 10% of their workday researching and searching for information.  The skills to conduct effective research are not inborn; they are learned, frequently in the course of higher education.

For students, doing research is the bread and butter of their academic life.  Conducting research doesn't just mean searching for information effectively; it means being able to judge the reliability of sources, place information within various contexts, and synthesize different information sources while developing one's thesis.  Encompassing a wide variety of competencies, research is one of the most important skills that students learn in preparation for participation in the knowledge economy.

Increasingly, however, students find that the overwhelming abundance of easily accessible but undifferentiated information on the Web hinders their ability to do the kind of deep, exploratory research that broadens their education and hones critical thinking.

Some professors seem to believe that the problems of Internet-based research begin and end with Wikipedia.  In 2007, Inside Higher Ed reported that the Middlebury history department was banning Wikipedia citations in research papers and exams.  It is now commonplace for professors to discourage and even penalize citing Wikipedia, although studies have suggested that students continue to use it for certain purposes.

Since 2008, a number of key studies by Professors Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg of the University of Washington's Information School show that simple no-Wikipedia policies fail to address the underlying issues.  Indeed, their studies, which have surveyed some 10,000 students in campuses across the country, prove that most students understand the inherent limitations of Wikipedia and tend to only use it for "presearch," early topic-shaping and context-gathering work.

Nevertheless, a study of 8,353 students at 25 U.S. colleges and universities conducted last spring revealed that "students find research daunting. They often drown in copious and irrelevant data."  According to the study, most students report finding it very difficult to begin a research project and determine the scope of what is expected of them.  This isn't due to a lack of ideas or motivation; rather, students' uncertainty about doing research hampers them from choosing and narrowing down a topic that they can adequately research given the constraints of time, grades, and Information Overload.

An overwhelming majority of students have responded by adopting risk averse, consistent information-gathering strategies  that only utilize a very limited toolbox—typically course readings, Google, Wikipedia, instructors, and library databases—no matter what the research topic.  Strikingly, while most students use some library resources, very few avail themselves of resources that require interaction with actual librarians.  As Purdue University's Sharon Weiner wrote in Educause Quarterly last year, the UWash studies show that "many students view their educational experience as one of 'satisficing,' finding just enough information that is 'good enough' to complete course assignments."

Concern about information literacy on campus has reached beyond this relatively small group of librarians and academics.  In 2009, President Obama issued a statement declaring October 2009 National Information Literacy Month.  The official document suggests that in addition to basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, students must learn information literacy—defined as the ability to acquire, collate, and evaluate information—as a distinct but equally important skill.

There's a growing realization, it seems, that to use all the information at their fingertips, students need instruction from experts in information science. The question going forward is how that instruction will be integrated into the college curriculum.

Benjamin Rossi is an analyst at Basex.

CBS: Author Warns Work Interruptions Can Increase Summertime Office Stress

NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – According to Jonathan Spira, thirty seconds of "hey, take a look at this" can mean over a minute and a half of "where was I?"

Spira, author the book "Overload: How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization," says a little empathy goes a long way in the summer. He recommends a "less is more" approach to emails, phone calls, tweets and Facebook messages, citing research that shows recovery time from interruptions at work, the amount of time it takes to return to a previous task, can be 10 times the length of the interruption.

LISTEN: Paul Murnane reports

Complete report here.